Man, I wish I knew for sure if I had a job or not. All I can do is wait.

Do I keep sending out letters to job ads, or is it now cool to relax? I really want to enjoy the dwindling days of unemployment, if indeed they are dwindling.

Oh man, I didn’t realize how brain dead I was from the five days entertaining my sister. Apart from a few phone calls, including one to the recruiter about that job thang (waiting on HR and the reference checking), I did very little today.

Let me put it another way, I embraced toilet cleaning as the right level of emotional and intellectual involvement.

The weird thing about staying with a family member, I think especially if you come from a big family, is realizing how different you are, and even more so, how your adult choices magnify those differences. I have a friend and fellow weblogger who has written about nervousness of planning a trip with a Mormon sibling. (If he’s anything it’s a godless, soulless, groovalicious Unitarian.) My sister ain’t a Mormon, but, man, our choices and experiences are almost as foreign to me.

Interestingly, one thing I’m taking away from the week is the thought that where you choose to live and among whom is a kind of activism. (Granted it’s a wimpy, passive, kind of flaccid form, but, hey, I’m fucking lazy.) I absolutely choose to live in places with all sorts of diversity, skin, religion, money, artists, capitalist, whatever. My ideal weekend probably involves a street festival, full of crowds, booths and maybe some kind of food of which I’ve never heard. (Like, if you ever end up in Japantown, SF at a Cherry Blossom Festival, try the little treat that is essentially two pancakes sandwiching a layer of bean paste. Quite lovely.)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally racist and narrow minded. Just ask my boyfriend who I torment. And, I certainly lack in cultural literacy, although maybe I do alright for a chick from a Clorox white Boston ‘burb.

I can say this, though, one thing I absolutely fucking hate about my hometown, always have and always will, is it’s homogeneity. When I lived there, I found it stifling. I was too curious about all of the other junk out there in the world from curry sauce to books and music and geo-political systems. I wanted to know how it felt to be Jon Feldman, the only Jewish kid in my grade school, or hear the stories about Boston neighborhoods from the METCO kids with whom I played half court and listened to Parliament Funkadelic.

I never told my mother when my junior high friend, Ronnie Valentine, got stabbed a couple of blocks from her Dorchester house and missed some school. I knew that would mean my world closing back to only the kids on my own block who were just like me.

I think music has always had a lot to do with it. The early taste of reggae and funk with the kids from the city and the records of my older brothers introduced me to shit outside of my view. Later, in high school, it was punk, a loathed and disdained music by the vast majority of my peers who memorized every lyric from Seeger, J. Geils and Meatloaf. I still hate listening to Seeger and Geils, although Meatloaf at least entertains me. (And, there’s the punk crossover fun fact of Clash girlfriend and collaborator Ellen Foley’s vocals on “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.”)

By contrast, my sister moved from New Hampshire to Wyoming, where the deer, antelope and Republican white boys roam, and I don’t really know what kind of music really yanks her crank. I once found a Celine Dion CD in her possession, which I think speaks adequately.

She enjoys and lives in places I don’t think I could. I can appreciate the mountains and Yellowstone and wildlife for a bit, but ultimately I would need the fix of city streets and color. Afterall, an elk is pretty much an elk, but different folks and strokes can liven up the week.

Besides, if I were surrounded by outdoorsy Republicans for too long, I’d probably get mouthy and end up on the wrong end of a high-powered hunting rifle (intended to preserve and protect the herd by thinning them out and getting some good eating in the process). No doubt I would at least attract some negative attention in Mayberry, RFD.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just finding bullshit theory to cover the little kid aspects that always live in any family. Some of the same stuff still hurts my feelings and makes me all teenage angst-y and misunderstood even at 41.

I mean, when the fuck will I no longer have to listen to siblings rag on my weight and athleticism (or lack thereof)? (I’m a normal weight, but to a section of my family I’m positively bovine by virtue of hating sports. However, since there’s a whole lot more people like myself who roll over stiff into a pile of catatonic boredom when faced with golf, I believe my hatred (which is only melodramatically strong) entirely rational.)

Only a sister or brother would say at the end of a trip something like, “Oh, I’m really surprised that we ended up doing a lot of stuff, I figured visiting you would mean a lot of sitting around.”

Man, oh, fucking, man, comedy here out west is EX-pensive.

For anyone who finds this post from my old ‘hood, ya’ll a bunch of whiney fucking crybabies when you bitch about the special place the All Asia. You know, like, “Oh, poor me, it was hard and no one could hear me and then I had to pay for my drink, and Patty wouldn’t give me a free one.” Boo – F’ing – Hoo.

Tonight was the All Asia with tougher acoustics, a sports bar atmosphere, a wireless mike sound system from Walmart, no mike stand, the same crowds and a $15 cover. Fucking hell.

Sure, the $15 included two drink tickets, but that is equivalent to nothing when the friends who drop by can’t/don’t drink. The ‘rita I had was a bargain, because I didn’t have to pay and at least the bartender sloshed a lot of tequila in the glass (which when you’re sharing with a non-drinker, and you’re both beyond tequila shooters on a Sunday night fun age, is actually not a treat), but the Cokes and water worked out as christly expensive.

I ended up picking up the dinner tab, because the combined 45-buck cover of my three friends seemed aggregious for a Sunday night showcase and four Cokes. I’m glad to do it for my friends, but man, I ain’t planning on paying to play.

And, for the first time in my life, I was at a sports bar that had shitty wings. Things sure is different here in the Bay Area. Good wings should be the one thing you can count on in a sports bar, beside aging frat boys in numbered jerseys and many TV screens.

One of my comedy dreams, except for riches and fame, is never, ever, ever to be handed a wireless mike in a wide-open, stage-less space again. Is a sound system intended to broadcast the human voice (and a mike stand) too much to ask?

I guess the bright side is on my learning curve. The silk purse/sow’s ear paradigm that produces mediocre comedy shows from the best intentioned folks holds true wherever you go. Cavernous bars with awkward sight lines and clusters of tables, chairs and couches set to face different screens and games do not transform themselves into temples of hilarity when new batteries are thrown into a wireless mike.

There were a couple of genuinely funny folks drowned out by feedback and acoustic hell, including the host who seems to be a genuinely nice and funny guy, who was kind enough to invite me. (For the Bostonians looking for a sense memory — remember Hannah’s?)

I’ll save it for another self-indulgent whine to mention that I performed behind a bar/counter feeling sunken, short and far away from the “crowd” on the other side.

As always, the best summation of most comedy shows: “Kill me now.”

Finally fixed the glitch that was keeping me from posting new junk in my photo gallery. Check out the latest from running around entertaining my visiting big sister.

Since she’s visiting, especially coupled with the likely curtailment of my free time soon, I’ve been taking her on little excursions. Yesterday’s was through the redwood forests of Muir Woods, one of the National Parks.

Maybe because of the Bambi line I have, this pic is one of my favs, though the quality is not terrific. Right after that click dead batteries meant I couldn’t go for perfect.

I’ve been feeling guilty lately, because I haven’t been hammering out the emails to Craig’s List job postings. What can I say, I’ve been busy.

Actually, I have a hard time focusing on sending out new letters when I’ve got a few fires lit and am waiting to see if they bear fruit (to mangle a couple of metaphors). With my sister visiting and the job the recruiter lined up, I slacked off. Hence the guilt of the title.

Looks like, though, I might have nailed the interview. Holy hell, I might actually stumble back into the grown-up, employed world. The recruiter tells me there will be a flurry of reference checking and whatnot starting this afternoon and into tomorrow, Friday the 13th.

It is the prospect of employment at a real live, fancy, expensive, not-for-profit, changing the world, environmentally sound and enriching office that leads to the other words in the title of this post.

I have regret that in the worry about finding employment and managing my funds and not ending up in the gutter, I may not have sufficiently lived the high life of unemployment. OK, I have pretty much milked it for about as long as anyone could literally getting my house in order. And, in the end, given the utter, sheer laziness of a theoretical pile of months of looking, I am one fucking lucky sonofabitch. (OK, lucky combined with some kickass skills.)

Nonetheless, now that I am in a sunny place in a sunny almost summer and haven’t done all of the sightseeing a traveling chick can do, I regret the sudden narrowing of the sand in the hourglass.

And, then there is fear. New jobs and the prospects therein exhaust and worry every ounce of my god-given neuroses. What if all the other kids hate me and no one will let me sit at their lunch table and they beat me at recess and the teacher won’t look at me and thinks I’m stupid and I can’t do the work and it goes on my permanent record?

It seems like such a mixed bag of feelings to begin working again and to do so in a fairly legit job. (As opposed to some of the ridiculous shit I’ve applied for or the glamorous fantasy of temping I’ve entertained.)

I’m trying to focus on the good shit. Like the building itself in which I might find myself. Stunning building, really, and award winning. Vaulted beams and glass with warm woods (from certified forests, no clear cutting there) and the kind of carpeting that softens into a slight, quiet thump the tap of the heaviest heel. The building is so green even the cleaning supplies are nontoxic. As I waited in my car early for the interview, I parked in a non-petroleum paved parking lot surrounded by native species landscaping across a rolling campus and watched lizards scampering over a log and rock while a duck flew over head to a small pond. Idyllic is the cliche that comes to mind.

In the midst of the tasteful and natural, a driver paced around a bit, waiting outside his livery vehicle. Again tasteful, an understated, black sedan. Next over was a Porsche Carrera.

Just walking into an office in a sunlit and solar paneled, clean, green space will be a marked improvement from the crumbling, neglected poorly windowed and more poorly lit office I had in a building slated for several years for demolition. To say that building was a shithole would be too edifying; one of its architectural features was the not completely repaired hole left by a car accident, which dented the office within and left a pile of brick on the sidewalk.)

And, I have to have faith that I have some instincts for determining good folks from bad. Everyone I met seemed A-OK. I heard no histrionics or loud voices or sturm and drang as I waited for the director. They talked politely, but it seemed honestly, about one another and the work. It was as the hackneyed California description goes all quite “laid back.”

Really, laid back would be the phrase, even to the point where no one referred to the president of a multi-billion dollar operation as other than “Bob,” (Duh, that’s not really his name, because I’m quite educable on the matters of weblogs and employers, even of the potential variety.) It even took a thorough Google search to determine whether “Dr.” was the proper honorific for the woman with whom I spent the bulk of my interview time for a quick “thank you” email. At my former place of employ, believe me honorifics were a clear and present force majeur and don’t you fucking forget it. (Although, in that wonderful way in which people like to see themselves as relaxed and cool, they would insist otherwise.)

Uncomfortably, I will wait and see on Friday the 13th how it all plays out.
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Interesting job interview yesterday. The good side was it seems like a nice place with nice people, and I felt pretty comfortable. The bad part is it’s in line with the junk on my resume I had on which I had thought I might turn my back.

Having felt pretty backstabbed when I left Boston (hidden pun definitely intended), I can’t shake my wariness. Everything still lingers like the worst of bad breakups. I just have to remember that like with shitty guys, shitty jobs need not be my fate. Maybe giving up a 15-year track record (successful I might add) in one field is as logical as swearing celibacy after dating yet another asshole.

One indication that it’s not black and white — the recruiter I’m working with sent me email, while I was at the interview he scheduled, about “National Slap a Co-Worker Day.”

Meanwhile, my sister is here visiting from the wilds of Wyoming. I think she might have been in the sticks too long since things like non-white people seem surprising to her, but coyotes don’t (we saw one in the Santa Cruz Mountains). She’s mentioned a couple of times that there are a lot of Asians. (I guess that would include the population of the house where she’s staying.)

The most interesting thing about spending time with my sister is how remarkably different we are. For example, I own NO pinkish, floral pants and, not one, but I think two or three pairs of coordinating pink, coral and/or green sandals. I would bet a tidy sum that I never, ever, fucking ever will.

Well, I might. Like if terrorists took over the world and demanded a national costume of pinkish, coral, giantly flowered capri pants. I would wear them if the only other option was death.

Last night, as is the custom when M. has finished dinner and cozies up to the TV, we were watching Fox or MSNBC or CNN or something newsy, and the story is about GW visiting Tbilisi, Georgia. (I swear that man looked at his approval ratings and asked around on what would be “historic” for him to do as president.)

So, the Georgians getting their democratic freak on are put on a whole big show, including dancing. After the dancing is concluded and GW is about to say a couple of words, I swear to fucking god he did an embarassing butt wiggle, hip shimmy thang, while applauding the actual dancers. It was goddamn painful to watch and think of this guy as the leader of the free, fucking world.

It was the kind of dance M. does in the privacy of our own home to embarrass us both and elicit laughter. Only, good old George wasn’t at home and was being broadcast worldwide. I look at that stuff, and I am fascinated, almost mesmerized, by how this clown could have gotten so many votes. I mention mesmerizing, because the only explanation I can come up with is some kind of mass hypnosis or psychosis last November.

I couldn’t find any pictures or videos to link here (probably because the press secretary had any such images destroyed as a blight on American relations with the world). I guess this substitution will have to do.

I think the chief benefit to living with someone is the prospect of pancakes. Iif you are living alone, and there isn’t much to eat in the house that’s breakfast worthy, you might just have your cuppa tea or coffee and let your stomach growl.

When you are living with someone else, though, you have a good excuse to make pancakes. I mean, you can’t let your partner go hungry, can you?

They were pretty killer pancakes, too. And the black currant cassis I happened to have lying around (because no plain strawberry jam or grape jelly suits this chick) seemed almost as though I wasn’t just wolfing down the puffy joy of a fresh ‘cake.

If everything else should fall apart, as Ilsa and Rick always had Paris, we will have had Sunday morning pancakes.

We saw Kingdom of Heaven tonight, and I think it’s only a matter of time before Sir Ridley Scott is branded un-American. Of course, being British, he won’t likely give a shit.

Nonetheless, Sir Ridley is a sitting duck for the pious, Christ lovers and their peculiar brand of hate.

I mean, really, how can he suggest something like there were factions of greed and corruption among the mighty Christian crusaders? That Jerusalem is a city of walls and mud and, perhaps, as a geographical location and architectural structure, not worthy of bloodshed in the name of any god? And, worse yet, that the merciful and reasonable leader was of all people, Saladin, a Koran-reading infidel?

I almost could forget that the star was Orlando Bloom, so it wasn’t a bad flick.

Also, in my fine, personal history of racism, M. tells me he never heard the epithet “towel head,” until he met me. However, in my own defense, we met in March/April 2003, when the war was new and the phrase de rigueur.